motivation

You have the choice about how you feel when faced with challenges in your workouts, creating time for your meal plan or meal journal and your reaction to the ups and downs you experience while on the journey towards your goals.

Failure (which only really happens when you stop trying) or success is defined by your choices. You need to realize that where you are at in your life, how you deal with stress and how you face challenges is always the outcome of your choices.

At the most basic level your environment and emotional state drives those choices, be aware of who you surround yourself with and the habits that drive your day.

Most of the time struggles in the gym with workouts and food temptations have more to do with emotional resiliency than the workouts or meal plan. So it’s just as important to work on your emotional resiliency.

The 4 aspects of Emotional resiliency you’ll want to focus on are:

Self esteem

Gratitude

Mindset and an optimistic attitude

Living in line with your “why”

You can’t predict the number on the scale or the weeks, months or years it will take to reach your goals. But you can choose put yourself in a supportive environment, and you can choose to feel good about making a positive change to your health and fitness.

You can tell when someone’s life has been changed and how big of an impact exercise has had on their life by how much they talk about it.

You don’t need to look any further than your Facebook feed either. We all have at least one friend who went from posting about weekly wine nights, hangover pho dates and Netflix binges to back squats, weight loss and the latest gym challenge.

Exercise even saves lives.

So many of your health problems will improve or even disappear as the result of a consistent exercise program. With as little as 30 minutes a day 3 days a week you could reap the rewards of a healthier life.

I’ve seen firsthand the healing power of exercise. I’ve had a client who at age 32 had a stroke and another at age 33 had a heart attack. Both have had their lives changed for the better with exercise.

With our hectic lives and technological advances it’s becoming far too easy to slip into poor health and in my opinion, health issues related to inactivity have become accepted as a part of life. But I assure you down the road we will pay for this one way or another, and the longer you wait the harder it will become to start.

I know you have your reasons for why you feel you “can’t start now” but I have 5 reasons you can…

1. You’ll Feel Great: The first thing that clients tell me after starting my exercise program is how much better they feel.

People don’t realize how bad they feel on a day-to-day basis. They just get used to feeling bad. Then when they start exercising they feel so much better; their energy levels skyrocket and they feel amazing for the first time in years and that’s what really gets them hooked.

2. No more Pain: Over time my clients notice a reduction in aches and pains. Chronic muscle and joint pain that they’ve lived with for years begins to fade. For some, joint replacement surgery is postponed. For others, arthritis pain is reduced.

Your muscles and joints feel better than ever and you are able to do what you want each day and that’s empowering to people who have given up hobbies due to poor health.

3. Eliminate Heart Disease: While clients can’t feel this healing benefit of exercise the same way they feel the post workout endorphin boost, it is the one that saves lives. Exercise removes two of the major risk factors that lead to heart disease:

How often do you goal set? For optimal results your should be goalsetting on a regular basis. Here are 6 steps to help you succeed.
Identify your mission: Ask yourself what matters most to you. There’s no right or wrong answer here.
Manage your energy: Help yourself to stay engaged and motivated by keeping your energy levels up through the day. A few ways you can do this are: eating every 3hrs, giving yourself small mental breaks during long tasks at work, creating emotional stability by making time for friends and family.
Make stress your friend: Stress is the stimulus for growth. Stress isn’t the enemy, whenever we challenge ourselves there’s going to be a stress factor, these tough times are what mold us. Learn to take control during these times.
Train like an athlete: Elite athletes know that training has two phases; the stimulus or stress factor and the recovery period. Those who control both see the greatest results .
change the story: you don’t have to be a victim of circumstance, this is after all your story so create your days how you want them to be lived.
Become your mission: I don’t lift; I am a lifter, this is my life. When something is important to you it takes up your life, its who you become. When you hear runners talk they say, “I am a runner”. I want you to think about how you define yourself, because whether you like it or not you are the sum or your daily habits.